WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:01.000 Okay. 00:01.000 --> 00:02.000 All right. 00:02.000 --> 00:09.400 All right, I think this is the audience we're going to get, so I want to just go ahead with 00:09.400 --> 00:10.400 it. 00:10.400 --> 00:12.800 I always record my own speeches in case they're of use later. 00:12.800 --> 00:15.680 So it's a tip for you. 00:15.680 --> 00:19.440 If you're ever doing a presentation and you're concerned because you have less people than 00:19.440 --> 00:24.520 you'd hoped, you just record your own speech and it becomes a part of your portfolio or 00:24.520 --> 00:26.000 a part of your own training tape. 00:26.000 --> 00:28.240 So there's an actual advantage to it either way. 00:28.240 --> 00:32.360 So for the 20 of you who decided to come here tonight, I appreciate that a lot. 00:32.360 --> 00:34.000 My name is Jason Scott. 00:34.000 --> 00:37.000 I am one of the organizers of Block Party. 00:37.000 --> 00:40.520 I have a history fetish. 00:40.520 --> 00:46.520 I'm very much into collecting history, historical artifacts, and computers. 00:46.520 --> 00:51.000 And a side effect of that is that I found myself doing presentations for people. 00:51.000 --> 00:54.600 I would go to places where they would say, could you come in and talk about your subject 00:54.600 --> 00:55.600 of interest? 00:55.600 --> 01:00.360 And I took to it like a fish to water, really enjoyed it. 01:00.360 --> 01:04.920 And over the past decade and a half, I've probably done something on the order of 40 01:04.920 --> 01:09.240 or 50 presentations, speeches, and that sort of thing. 01:09.240 --> 01:14.360 And I come from a training background in performing arts. 01:14.360 --> 01:20.840 I went to a school called Emerson College in Boston where I was a performer, I was a 01:20.840 --> 01:24.940 radio person, I was a magazine editor, I was a bunch of things. 01:24.940 --> 01:29.940 So I came from that background and there were things that we were taught as a matter of 01:29.940 --> 01:35.980 course that are simply not taught in other locations, in other schools, in other places. 01:35.980 --> 01:41.480 And people come up through different realms and find themselves on a stage talking to 01:41.480 --> 01:46.260 people to various degrees of terror, misery, happiness, or whatever. 01:46.260 --> 01:53.900 So I asked the organizers if perhaps the night before we went into another round of presentations 01:53.900 --> 01:58.280 given at not a con, that I would have something that I could give just to give some people 01:58.280 --> 01:59.740 some pointers. 01:59.740 --> 02:05.200 So anybody who's a presenter here for this weekend, it's specifically for you, but anybody 02:05.200 --> 02:08.900 else who's just kind of interested in some of the work that goes on behind the scenes 02:08.900 --> 02:14.520 when you have a person up here, this speech will work for you as well. 02:14.520 --> 02:21.140 So when I start this out, I thank you. 02:21.140 --> 02:26.700 And the reason I thank you is because any presentation represents an investment of time 02:26.700 --> 02:27.700 by people. 02:27.700 --> 02:33.620 In fact, if you look at it even more mathematically, it's the investment of time by each person 02:33.620 --> 02:39.540 in the room sitting for the period of time that you are talking times the number of people. 02:39.540 --> 02:43.040 And that is a lot of time depending on your audience. 02:43.040 --> 02:47.580 This is an investment that some people make lightly if they're young and less if they're 02:47.580 --> 02:48.580 old. 02:48.580 --> 02:52.460 We all know we're going to end up in the ground and to spend some of that time in a boring 02:52.460 --> 02:59.660 or uninformative or unentertaining speech is a personal insult to me because you have 02:59.660 --> 03:03.100 people who could be doing anything else and here they are with you. 03:03.100 --> 03:07.040 So I initially always thank people for coming because of that. 03:07.040 --> 03:12.460 So if that sounds a little weighty, I understand, but it's the weight I like to think about 03:12.460 --> 03:14.540 these things. 03:14.540 --> 03:22.380 The speech that you're going to get today is basically a technical presentation. 03:22.380 --> 03:26.220 That is to say I'm giving you facts, but there's all sorts of presentations out there. 03:26.220 --> 03:33.380 So when you say presentation, you could as well be saying writing or recording or anything 03:33.380 --> 03:34.380 else. 03:34.380 --> 03:37.260 It's a very, very general term. 03:37.260 --> 03:42.860 And people will say, oh, I did a presentation without telling you more and it could be anything. 03:42.860 --> 03:47.020 For instance, if you have a person who has an item and the whole purpose of why they're 03:47.020 --> 03:50.580 up here is to show you the item, that's basically a demonstration. 03:50.580 --> 03:55.340 They're basically going to show you this neat item that they've created and everything else 03:55.340 --> 03:57.460 they say is primarily chowder. 03:57.460 --> 04:00.500 It's primarily there just to make you feel like you're talking to somebody who knows 04:00.500 --> 04:03.380 what they're talking about, but whatever one wants to see is the item. 04:03.380 --> 04:06.660 This is especially the case if that has been promoted. 04:06.660 --> 04:11.380 On the other hand, you might have somebody who has discovered something new or has a 04:11.380 --> 04:14.980 knowledge of a certain subject and people are here because they want that person who 04:14.980 --> 04:19.260 is an expert to give them a little bit of that expertise. 04:19.260 --> 04:24.620 So they feel like they're part of that person's progress and they feel like they're going 04:24.620 --> 04:25.620 to benefit from it. 04:25.620 --> 04:29.900 Other times you have people who are here because of a requirement. 04:29.900 --> 04:34.940 That is to say, for instance, they are paid by their company to go to a number of speeches. 04:34.940 --> 04:39.060 At these speeches they have to take notes to take back to the company or the company 04:39.060 --> 04:41.660 won't reimburse them for their expenses. 04:41.660 --> 04:48.260 This audience is extremely tough because either they don't care or they really feel pressured 04:48.260 --> 04:52.700 to write down what you're doing and if they don't find any meat there they feel like they're 04:52.700 --> 04:57.820 just automatons who are really there because it's in a city that has something they want 04:57.820 --> 05:03.660 to go to like a bar or an event or a party and they're just doing this to pass the time. 05:03.660 --> 05:05.660 All of these are different audiences. 05:05.660 --> 05:10.380 What we have here is a hacker con audience and hacker cons have an interesting history 05:10.380 --> 05:16.180 because initially they were just large parties, parties put on by hackers in someone's backyard, 05:16.180 --> 05:18.020 a bunch of people hanging out. 05:18.020 --> 05:23.060 It was the newness of having people that you only knew online come spend time with you 05:23.060 --> 05:24.060 in person. 05:24.060 --> 05:27.260 That was the core reason to do it. 05:27.260 --> 05:33.500 Now presentations as a medium, that is to say a person on stage giving you information 05:33.500 --> 05:40.020 whether for their own needs or yours has been going on for many, many hundreds of years. 05:40.020 --> 05:44.780 In this extreme formalized setting where there's a professional location that's designed that 05:44.780 --> 05:50.460 today we're a hacker con, tomorrow we're a social media con, the day after, that's relatively 05:50.460 --> 05:54.100 newer this more industrialized version. 05:54.100 --> 05:59.860 You have to keep that in your mind when you're presenting that you're in a very artificial 05:59.860 --> 06:05.300 space that isn't really designed for performing. 06:05.300 --> 06:11.220 In a hacker con speech this starts to rise up really in the 1990s. 06:11.220 --> 06:16.100 There's a few 1980s versions but what it came down to was instead of having these in people's 06:16.100 --> 06:21.420 backyards we could have them in hotels because people could have good rooms then. 06:21.420 --> 06:27.060 Then we could have a communion space where people give ideas. 06:27.060 --> 06:32.900 A lot of times those could be very loose because it was the pure joy of being able to be in 06:32.900 --> 06:37.460 front of people and talk to them about what you were doing. 06:37.460 --> 06:42.020 That was more than enough for a presenter. 06:42.020 --> 06:44.260 In other vocations that's not the case. 06:44.260 --> 06:48.960 A presenter will expect to be paid or have their travel expenses reimbursed. 06:48.960 --> 06:55.140 They will be given access to an unbelievably expensive location like say the TED speeches 06:55.140 --> 06:57.940 which are thousands of dollars to attend. 06:57.940 --> 07:02.540 Simply by being able to attend for free you've actually saved thousands of dollars. 07:02.540 --> 07:05.060 In some ways you can still be paid that way. 07:05.060 --> 07:09.100 Hacker cons by their very nature don't make the money that other cons do. 07:09.100 --> 07:11.700 They don't tend towards them. 07:11.700 --> 07:17.700 As a result the people who presented hacker cons are primarily people who are going to 07:17.700 --> 07:22.640 get in for free as their primary method of payment. 07:22.640 --> 07:23.900 This is critical to understand. 07:23.900 --> 07:28.660 This means that the person who's up here may or may not be up here because they want to 07:28.660 --> 07:31.620 be but may be up here because they have to be. 07:31.620 --> 07:36.460 I tell you that if you've ever been through a speech where the person up here wants to 07:36.460 --> 07:43.100 be here less than you it is excruciating because there's no planning, there's no effort to 07:43.100 --> 07:49.500 really get things out and they rely solely on their general knowledge froth to kind of 07:49.500 --> 07:51.020 give things to you. 07:51.020 --> 07:57.900 Obviously if a person is so famous or has shown themselves to be of such quality that 07:57.900 --> 08:03.540 just being near them is kind of enjoyable that sometimes is a great time and there are 08:03.540 --> 08:05.580 certainly people who give speeches that way. 08:05.580 --> 08:09.700 But there's a lot of convention space that's taken up now by people who are presenting 08:09.700 --> 08:15.500 things that they did at school or have kind of half remixed things they read online in 08:15.500 --> 08:21.580 the past couple of months and that they're mostly motivated to finish the speech and 08:21.580 --> 08:25.580 get on to being an attendee. 08:25.580 --> 08:31.060 Motivation is one of the most important things that I want to get along to you. 08:31.060 --> 08:36.620 The question that I always ask in any kind of an endeavor that I do is why? 08:36.620 --> 08:39.000 Why are you here? 08:39.000 --> 08:41.140 Why am I here? 08:41.140 --> 08:43.980 Why would people want to come to this? 08:43.980 --> 08:46.740 Why would I speak about this versus anything else? 08:46.740 --> 08:51.380 Tomorrow I'm giving a presentation on Mario 64. 08:51.380 --> 08:54.300 I had a number of subjects I could have gone through. 08:54.300 --> 08:58.480 Part of it is because not a con does not pay me and part of it was because I was kind of 08:58.480 --> 09:01.200 intrigued by this very unusual idea. 09:01.200 --> 09:05.180 So I tend to use not a con as a place to do very experimental speeches. 09:05.180 --> 09:07.700 I did one speech where I never left a chair. 09:07.700 --> 09:13.180 I did one speech where the person who was presenting it was dead. 09:13.180 --> 09:18.260 I presented a few other interesting experiments to simply try them out and see what would 09:18.260 --> 09:19.260 go on. 09:19.260 --> 09:21.420 I put effort into them but they were experimental. 09:21.420 --> 09:22.420 Same thing with tomorrow. 09:22.420 --> 09:30.500 I'm giving a speech where I think that Mario 64 is one of the most important events in 09:30.500 --> 09:36.700 computing history and try to then take that thesis and demonstrate it both through the 09:36.700 --> 09:38.500 game and citing history. 09:38.500 --> 09:43.860 This may or may not be interesting but I think that it will be. 09:43.860 --> 09:49.620 And so the people who come who are there to see a Super Mario speech and wonder about 09:49.620 --> 09:55.740 this part of their history will get something out of it, will be informed, will also perhaps 09:55.740 --> 09:57.060 learn something they didn't. 09:57.060 --> 09:58.780 So that's where I work from. 09:58.780 --> 10:04.820 When a person works on a speech say about a project that they're working on, the reason 10:04.820 --> 10:10.420 they're doing it is because they either want more information from people or they're really 10:10.420 --> 10:15.980 proud of it or they simply think that it can't hurt. 10:15.980 --> 10:22.380 The audience may be here simply because there's another event happening in the room before 10:22.380 --> 10:28.480 and they've stayed or there's a room event afterwards that's so popular that by staying 10:28.480 --> 10:33.100 in the room and the convention has a policy of that, they don't clear the room. 10:33.100 --> 10:38.420 Some conventions because of the mass of people will clear the room and so you don't have 10:38.420 --> 10:43.140 this case but sometimes people are here simply because they've got nowhere else to go and 10:43.140 --> 10:46.380 those people are only going to peripherally spend time with your speech. 10:46.380 --> 10:49.820 In fact they're going to probably be your worst critics because they're going to concentrate 10:49.820 --> 10:52.060 on the parts that a lot of people don't. 10:52.060 --> 10:53.780 Why is Jason walking back and forth? 10:53.780 --> 10:55.980 Why is he wearing that funny god damn hat? 10:55.980 --> 10:56.980 What's up with the sideburns? 10:56.980 --> 10:58.540 Why does he look formal? 10:58.540 --> 11:01.340 Why isn't there any sort of a PowerPoint presentation? 11:01.340 --> 11:02.740 Why are the lights up? 11:02.740 --> 11:08.940 They're looking at the whole zeitgeist of your performance and that's fine with me who 11:08.940 --> 11:14.060 might spend some time preparing for that but other people what they might not realize is 11:14.060 --> 11:16.620 they're actually doing two presentations. 11:16.620 --> 11:21.260 They're doing the presentation over here on this thing coming across this way and they're 11:21.260 --> 11:26.660 putting it on a laptop and looking down at their laptop while this event goes on over 11:26.660 --> 11:31.820 here on this projector and they may not have spent any time understanding the room and 11:31.820 --> 11:38.060 so what people see out there is an extremely unhappy guy aimed down this way doing this 11:38.060 --> 11:42.820 looking up a little bit and you can get away with that for a while because the person may 11:42.820 --> 11:47.700 be doing something so brilliant everyone wants to see it but for a lot of people it ends 11:47.700 --> 11:58.540 up becoming a rote reading of a series of hard to read slides to an indifferent audience 11:58.540 --> 12:05.580 and while that's fine if your entire reason for being there is to get through the hour 12:05.580 --> 12:11.020 I really do contend that a modicum of work and preparation will make your speech that 12:11.020 --> 12:14.140 much better. 12:14.140 --> 12:19.900 The audience location size feeds into it. 12:19.900 --> 12:24.940 I always make a point when I can of walking in the room when I come into a speech so if 12:24.940 --> 12:30.100 I know it's going to be here today the first thing I do when I get here is try to figure 12:30.100 --> 12:33.940 out which room am I going to speak in and I walk into the room and I know immediately 12:33.940 --> 12:34.940 if there's going to be problems. 12:34.940 --> 12:39.540 Is there going to be sunlight coming through here? 12:39.540 --> 12:41.940 Are there lights that are adequate to show me? 12:41.940 --> 12:43.460 Will my connection work out? 12:43.460 --> 12:47.900 Can I put my laptop on right now and make sure that it's working? 12:47.900 --> 12:53.180 Can I spend that time, that 20 minutes beforehand, maybe a day beforehand and make sure everything 12:53.180 --> 12:56.780 that I present here is what's going to work? 12:56.780 --> 12:58.180 A lot of people don't. 12:58.180 --> 13:02.820 They walk in cold and very few people can walk in cold. 13:02.820 --> 13:07.540 You've got to have an unbelievably well prepared speech to walk in cold where you expect them 13:07.540 --> 13:11.860 to walk up to that microphone and it's going to work and you slam in and you're going. 13:11.860 --> 13:15.760 If you watch most of the professionals either they have someone before them who does it 13:15.760 --> 13:20.380 or they themselves have done it hours beforehand. 13:20.380 --> 13:24.020 When a person pulls a rabbit out of a hat people go wow but they don't understand. 13:24.020 --> 13:27.260 You had to hide the bunny there hours beforehand. 13:27.260 --> 13:29.260 So hiding the bunny is critical. 13:29.260 --> 13:31.980 You want to work on all your hard stuff beforehand. 13:31.980 --> 13:36.100 If you find out at the same time that the audience does that something doesn't work 13:36.100 --> 13:41.260 it reflects poorly on you and the audience loses you. 13:41.260 --> 13:44.580 I also try to find out how many people I'm speaking to. 13:44.580 --> 13:47.620 I have a talent for speaking in front of groups of people. 13:47.620 --> 13:54.500 I know that there's a statistic out there that most people are more afraid of public 13:54.500 --> 13:56.660 speaking than death. 13:56.660 --> 14:03.180 First of all I don't agree but we'll say it's probably third or fourth that they're 14:03.180 --> 14:06.900 afraid of public speaking and somewhere up there is you die. 14:06.900 --> 14:13.420 But when a person is public speaking they may or may not be able to look at this room 14:13.420 --> 14:16.020 as a performance space. 14:16.020 --> 14:20.220 They may look at it as an audition. 14:20.220 --> 14:24.140 In other words they look at this audience and they say oh God all these people are evaluating 14:24.140 --> 14:25.620 me and what am I going to do? 14:25.620 --> 14:27.900 And it reflects in the body language. 14:27.900 --> 14:29.620 Whereas I'm very comfortable with it. 14:29.620 --> 14:36.580 I ran for the school presidency in high school knowing full well I wouldn't win simply for 14:36.580 --> 14:42.300 the joy of the fact that the entire school had to listen to me for ten minutes for my 14:42.300 --> 14:45.340 speech and I had an awesome time. 14:45.340 --> 14:50.740 I just got up and just started making them do the wave and I proposed digital clocks 14:50.740 --> 14:56.380 in the classrooms and I demanded an on campus McDonald's and I just did all these wonderful 14:56.380 --> 14:57.380 things. 14:57.380 --> 14:58.700 This was in 11th grade. 14:58.700 --> 15:01.140 In 12th grade I had my ass kicked. 15:01.140 --> 15:02.980 Absolutely kicked. 15:02.980 --> 15:07.980 I went to run for it again because what the heck it was fun last time. 15:07.980 --> 15:10.060 And there was a kid who presented before me. 15:10.060 --> 15:11.380 His name was David Mechner. 15:11.380 --> 15:16.780 David Mechner's brother is Jordan Mechner who created Prince of Persia and the Mechner 15:16.780 --> 15:19.100 family was a part of my high school. 15:19.100 --> 15:22.460 David also ran on a joke ticket. 15:22.460 --> 15:26.060 David's platform was brilliant. 15:26.060 --> 15:27.860 It was satirical. 15:27.860 --> 15:29.380 It was subtle. 15:29.380 --> 15:31.020 Here was his platform. 15:31.020 --> 15:32.460 Hello students. 15:32.460 --> 15:38.980 I know that most of you fear coming back to your school in the years hence when you're 15:38.980 --> 15:44.020 older and feeling nostalgic and you find that it's all changed. 15:44.020 --> 15:45.540 Everything's different. 15:45.540 --> 15:50.100 Everything is not where you remember it and you no longer feel connected to our wonderful 15:50.100 --> 15:51.700 Horace Greeley High School. 15:51.700 --> 15:56.540 I promise you as school president that I will change nothing. 15:56.540 --> 15:58.420 I will enact no actions. 15:58.420 --> 16:04.620 I will commit no crimes against the memory of this place by doing anything. 16:04.620 --> 16:06.900 By voting for me you vote for nothing. 16:06.900 --> 16:08.380 It was brilliant. 16:08.380 --> 16:10.460 I was on after him. 16:10.460 --> 16:11.460 What could I do? 16:11.460 --> 16:15.260 And the answer was I nosedived. 16:15.260 --> 16:16.260 Totally nosedived. 16:16.260 --> 16:17.260 Got up there. 16:17.260 --> 16:18.260 Got nervous. 16:18.260 --> 16:21.300 But the nervousness wasn't that I was facing 1200 people. 16:21.300 --> 16:25.420 The nervousness was I was facing 1200 people with nothing. 16:25.420 --> 16:27.340 That's the fear for me. 16:27.340 --> 16:29.260 My fear is not speaking in front of people. 16:29.260 --> 16:34.100 It's speaking in front of people and realizing I am absorbing all that wonderful time, all 16:34.100 --> 16:36.580 that living from people for nothing. 16:36.580 --> 16:42.300 And all they're going to remember was I was a douche for 10 minutes. 16:42.300 --> 16:48.540 However, I have never forgotten that and that has been over 20 years ago. 16:48.540 --> 16:55.660 And I never walked up on stage without at least having something in my back pocket to 16:55.660 --> 17:02.420 make sure that I could present something cohesive to some extent as opposed to wing it. 17:02.420 --> 17:07.260 A similar lesson happened to me just a few years ago where I presented at OSCON, the 17:07.260 --> 17:14.220 open source convention in Portland, where it wasn't quite portrayed to me what I was 17:14.220 --> 17:15.420 going to be presenting for. 17:15.420 --> 17:17.500 I was only presenting a room of this size. 17:17.500 --> 17:18.940 I kind of knew that. 17:18.940 --> 17:20.900 But unfortunately I couldn't see the room. 17:20.900 --> 17:25.460 But they did a very brilliant thing which we've just done a version of here. 17:25.460 --> 17:30.420 They would have a remix keynote every morning. 17:30.420 --> 17:36.940 So for one hour, five people would present 10 minute speeches from random points in the 17:36.940 --> 17:37.940 day. 17:37.940 --> 17:43.460 And you would show up at 9 o'clock and from 9 to 10 you would get to sit through essentially 17:43.460 --> 17:45.460 five reduced speeches. 17:45.460 --> 17:51.100 This would perhaps, in a place that had multiple tracks, five tracks, you might say, oh my 17:51.100 --> 17:55.940 goodness that boringly titled person is actually fascinating. 17:55.940 --> 17:57.620 I want to know more about that guy. 17:57.620 --> 18:03.820 It was a wonderful idea for cross pollination because it's so easy to just browse these 18:03.820 --> 18:09.700 summaries of a person's talk and make a judgment and to see the person anyway. 18:09.700 --> 18:19.140 The thing was this remix was to the entire convening body of the entire convention. 18:19.140 --> 18:21.380 I had assumed I was going to do a 40 person speech. 18:21.380 --> 18:28.660 And when I walked into the back of the room I learned a little thing which was any room 18:28.660 --> 18:34.700 that requires seven projectors to project to the audience is fucking huge. 18:34.700 --> 18:37.300 And there were 3700 people there. 18:37.300 --> 18:39.580 The largest speech I'd ever been at. 18:39.580 --> 18:42.340 And I hadn't prepared for it. 18:42.340 --> 18:46.660 Because I had been planning to give a reduced version of my current speech. 18:46.660 --> 18:48.140 And wing it. 18:48.140 --> 18:52.420 Because I was under the impression it was just kind of a short coffee clutch interview. 18:52.420 --> 18:56.940 Now bear in mind this was something to the level that each speaker was assigned three 18:56.940 --> 18:59.620 people for this. 18:59.620 --> 19:05.180 We each had three people who would come up to us by the side, prepare us, wire us up, 19:05.180 --> 19:06.180 get us ready. 19:06.180 --> 19:07.180 This was the big leagues. 19:07.180 --> 19:09.220 This was my chance to shine. 19:09.220 --> 19:10.480 And I blew it. 19:10.480 --> 19:12.920 Because I got up there and I did okay. 19:12.920 --> 19:14.700 I can wing like anybody else. 19:14.700 --> 19:18.700 I have a certain presence and that presence comes across to an audience and I can expand 19:18.700 --> 19:19.700 it. 19:19.700 --> 19:22.580 But a 3500 person audience is not the same entity. 19:22.580 --> 19:23.940 I can hear you laugh. 19:23.940 --> 19:26.260 I can figure out which one of you is responding this way. 19:26.260 --> 19:29.660 I can look at your body language in this room right now and see which of you are here because 19:29.660 --> 19:31.060 you want to and which ones you don't. 19:31.060 --> 19:32.060 I study my audience. 19:32.060 --> 19:33.860 It's part of why the lights are on. 19:33.860 --> 19:40.860 But in a 3500 person audience any emotion you blow out to there will just be absorbed. 19:40.860 --> 19:42.260 This is a problem musicians have. 19:42.260 --> 19:44.420 You perform to a stadium. 19:44.420 --> 19:45.580 There's nothing. 19:45.580 --> 19:49.820 You do something incredible and they just take it. 19:49.820 --> 19:55.060 They're this thriving mass of humanity that could not care less about you or it feels 19:55.060 --> 19:56.060 like that. 19:56.060 --> 20:00.780 And when they do get angry or they do get excited you're just affected by it. 20:00.780 --> 20:05.340 So when I would make a joke my joke would literally ripple through the audience and 20:05.340 --> 20:06.540 bring it back. 20:06.540 --> 20:09.080 And I feel always that I blew it. 20:09.080 --> 20:11.180 People who might watch it might go, well you seemed okay. 20:11.180 --> 20:12.180 You seemed like you were together. 20:12.180 --> 20:15.340 I'm like yeah but I wasn't on top of it. 20:15.340 --> 20:16.900 Being on top of the game. 20:16.900 --> 20:18.500 Being on top of things. 20:18.500 --> 20:20.260 That's why I do it. 20:20.260 --> 20:21.900 I want this to be better. 20:21.900 --> 20:26.540 I want the audience to be better for when I speak and I want to be better at the end 20:26.540 --> 20:27.740 of when I speak. 20:27.740 --> 20:31.460 If I fail failure is fine. 20:31.460 --> 20:33.180 Failure is a start. 20:33.180 --> 20:37.100 Failure is your example to yourself of what not to do later. 20:37.100 --> 20:42.380 If you treat everything as the end all be all then you will be in a constant state of 20:42.380 --> 20:44.460 misery and that's in life in general. 20:44.460 --> 20:47.100 If your first demo sucks it sucks. 20:47.100 --> 20:51.740 If your first article you get published in a paper is boring and somebody points out 20:51.740 --> 20:55.820 a central error in the thesis that's not the end of your writing career. 20:55.820 --> 20:57.980 That's the beginning of your writing career. 20:57.980 --> 21:02.780 Similarly when you give a speech it pays to look at the recordings of yourself. 21:02.780 --> 21:04.740 To look at your presentation style. 21:04.740 --> 21:07.380 To say to yourself do I even want to watch this? 21:07.380 --> 21:13.780 If you can't watch yourself people might have a little bit of displeasure seeing their 21:13.780 --> 21:18.980 body language from the external but if you can't even turn it to the audio and listen 21:18.980 --> 21:25.780 to yourself then I don't know how you expected the audience to sit through it without a laptop 21:25.780 --> 21:29.020 and a PBA for them to twitter how much you suck. 21:29.020 --> 21:35.020 You're going to end up being a screen saver at the top of the stage. 21:35.020 --> 21:38.780 You're the thing kind of running that's kind of amusing and an automaton that's not really 21:38.780 --> 21:43.000 interesting and boy when do we get to three o'clock. 21:43.000 --> 21:49.500 So in terms of audiences besides this one which I said was a hackathon audience you 21:49.500 --> 21:52.260 have a whole division of them. 21:52.260 --> 21:53.460 You have an academic audience. 21:53.460 --> 21:57.860 An academic audience is there because they're ostensibly trying to learn things from each 21:57.860 --> 22:01.260 other so their speeches tend to be very info dense. 22:01.260 --> 22:04.660 They tend to have a lot of information in them and the people who are there are being 22:04.660 --> 22:05.660 given it. 22:05.660 --> 22:12.420 I happen to think that's terribly and utterly inefficient and a real waste and primarily 22:12.420 --> 22:15.860 a way for people to drink and see each other which means I think that they should be really 22:15.860 --> 22:18.180 short introduction speeches. 22:18.180 --> 22:23.620 We're so lucky now in 2009 that your speech can be the front end the beautiful polished 22:23.620 --> 22:27.700 front end to a complete idea set on a website. 22:27.700 --> 22:34.100 You can create all of your ideas all of your examples all of your wonderful endless boring 22:34.100 --> 22:39.060 ass stories and put them all on your website where people can browse them and read them 22:39.060 --> 22:46.220 at their own leisure and that this 40 minute 50 minute presentation can be a really well 22:46.220 --> 22:51.720 rehearsed really exciting idea set for what's going to come later. 22:51.720 --> 22:54.780 It's just such an opportunity that we have now. 22:54.780 --> 22:56.140 Previously you couldn't do that. 22:56.140 --> 23:00.940 In the 1800s during the great exposition you basically had to show your wares and try to 23:00.940 --> 23:03.780 convince people walking by that they should get this. 23:03.780 --> 23:06.260 Not much more than a Broadway barker. 23:06.260 --> 23:10.900 But now we have so much wonderful information going on and so much of a wonderful network 23:10.900 --> 23:12.060 set up. 23:12.060 --> 23:14.260 It's so much more of an opportunity. 23:14.260 --> 23:20.500 So for me I think of this all as just this exciting ability and in an academic situation 23:20.500 --> 23:25.300 you're trying to push into the audience as much of a lecture as possible and they're 23:25.300 --> 23:28.540 like a class that you're never going to get again. 23:28.540 --> 23:32.060 So your students have assembled you're going to teach them and they're never going to come 23:32.060 --> 23:35.340 back and you're never going to be able to really test them. 23:35.340 --> 23:39.020 And so it's OK but not great. 23:39.020 --> 23:40.020 You have an indifferent audience. 23:40.020 --> 23:44.180 Indifferent audiences and audience that's there because they have to be or because something's 23:44.180 --> 23:46.580 coming afterwards or before. 23:46.580 --> 23:52.820 They're not really there for you and you have to be there at least for yourself because 23:52.820 --> 23:53.980 they'll pick up on that. 23:53.980 --> 23:59.340 A person who's there because they are indifferent will translate even worse to an indifferent 23:59.340 --> 24:00.340 audience. 24:00.340 --> 24:02.900 You have chums and buddies. 24:02.900 --> 24:06.780 People who are here where you're at a speech and there's 20 people and eight of them know 24:06.780 --> 24:07.780 you personally. 24:07.780 --> 24:12.940 I've given enough speeches that I have people come to the speeches on the strength of my 24:12.940 --> 24:17.700 name and that's fine but I don't do it for them. 24:17.700 --> 24:21.580 I do different kinds of speeches and so like a performance they go oh that Jason Scott 24:21.580 --> 24:22.580 speech sucked. 24:22.580 --> 24:23.580 Oh that one was pretty good. 24:23.580 --> 24:26.740 Oh it was really much better before the band broke up. 24:26.740 --> 24:32.940 And that's a different kind of audience too and the problem, the danger is that you can 24:32.940 --> 24:34.940 end up playing to them. 24:34.940 --> 24:37.780 You have people in the audience you know, they're your buddies and then you just start 24:37.780 --> 24:43.820 using language, you use terms, you use all sorts of shortcuts because your buddies are 24:43.820 --> 24:47.860 there and you don't want them to sit through the basics. 24:47.860 --> 24:52.300 And so the rest of your audience feels like they've assembled to a family gathering that 24:52.300 --> 24:54.660 they're not a part of. 24:54.660 --> 24:56.540 Huge pitfall. 24:56.540 --> 24:58.860 And then there's what I call an incestual audience. 24:58.860 --> 25:03.300 An incestual audience will be where other people who are presenting before or after 25:03.300 --> 25:05.060 you are in the audience. 25:05.060 --> 25:09.140 In other words you have a round table set up where I'm up here speaking but all that 25:09.140 --> 25:13.420 you're really here for is to speak. 25:13.420 --> 25:18.140 It's got no real paradigm for people interacting with each other. 25:18.140 --> 25:21.180 Each of you are here because it's going to be your turn and you're going to come up and 25:21.180 --> 25:24.460 say okay and so on and some of you might take pointers. 25:24.460 --> 25:26.860 At that point you're pretty much playing to this camera. 25:26.860 --> 25:30.900 You're playing to do the presentation or to put an extra line on your resume to say you 25:30.900 --> 25:32.860 gave a presentation at a convention. 25:32.860 --> 25:36.420 Much more effective than saying convention than hacker convention. 25:36.420 --> 25:43.700 And then there's a required speech and by that I mean a speech where you are a person 25:43.700 --> 25:50.300 who has to give these speeches or they're an audience that has to attend your speech. 25:50.300 --> 25:56.020 For instance Dan Kaminsky who is a hit on the hacker circuit gives talks that are essentially 25:56.020 --> 25:57.020 requirements. 25:57.020 --> 26:02.820 In other words their audience is going to be there because their employers have said 26:02.820 --> 26:06.980 oh if you've got to go you've got to attend Dan Kaminsky's speech. 26:06.980 --> 26:12.340 And you sit into Dan Kaminsky's speech and you get his ramblings which have all sorts 26:12.340 --> 26:17.380 of information in them but are all kind of jumbled and then you've done it. 26:17.380 --> 26:19.580 Check it off and you move on. 26:19.580 --> 26:21.940 That's a whole different audience in its own. 26:21.940 --> 26:27.420 You're going to see all sorts of those kind of speeches this weekend. 26:27.420 --> 26:31.140 Like I said how many of you are presenting at this thing this year? 26:31.140 --> 26:35.020 So that's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven out of the twenty. 26:35.020 --> 26:37.140 So you are the people who I want. 26:37.140 --> 26:40.480 I know one or two of you are first times for this. 26:40.480 --> 26:45.340 I know that you didn't expect to walk into this room for my speech and make it sound 26:45.340 --> 26:48.540 like you were being prepared for a skydive. 26:48.540 --> 26:50.060 But I'm not trying to give that impression. 26:50.060 --> 26:54.460 I'm not saying and if you fuck it up you are screwed. 26:54.460 --> 27:01.260 Not a con does not appreciate an unforthright dishonorable presentation. 27:01.260 --> 27:02.740 No actually we absorb them. 27:02.740 --> 27:03.740 We love them. 27:03.740 --> 27:08.660 But I want it that you don't just think of the way things are done here or whatever as 27:08.660 --> 27:09.940 being the only way to do it. 27:09.940 --> 27:17.220 And I also sometimes run into people who again they think of the speech as a requirement 27:17.220 --> 27:22.580 to get in free, very mercenary or they think of it as I have to get all this information 27:22.580 --> 27:27.380 out in forty minutes but nobody will ever understand everything I'm trying to say here. 27:27.380 --> 27:33.860 And then of course there's all the Alexander Technique performance issues which I'm of 27:33.860 --> 27:35.340 course parodying here. 27:35.340 --> 27:44.540 The Alexander Technique is a school of learning that breaks down how your body language performs. 27:44.540 --> 27:51.580 I have gout, I have arthritis so I walk with a certain kind of gait and I've hunched my 27:51.580 --> 27:58.220 shoulders a certain way over the years and I've got a tendency to lean down and I've 27:58.220 --> 28:03.260 got a number of flaws in my presentation style which I sometimes fight and sometimes forget 28:03.260 --> 28:04.900 in the heat of the moment. 28:04.900 --> 28:09.820 All of these are messages to the audience whether a person wants to admit it or not. 28:09.820 --> 28:14.380 If a person can't look at you while he's talking it gives the impression that they don't want 28:14.380 --> 28:16.300 to deal with you or they can't deal with you. 28:16.300 --> 28:22.180 If a person constantly looks around a lot it almost starts to give kind of a bizarre 28:22.180 --> 28:25.980 vibe because it's like what are you doing? 28:25.980 --> 28:27.780 Why are you trying to sell this? 28:27.780 --> 28:32.780 But then you have people who will do kind of a half thing where they're here and they're 28:32.780 --> 28:37.580 doing something and they're like okay wait wait wait and they're performing an awesome 28:37.580 --> 28:42.460 show to these patterns. 28:42.460 --> 28:45.620 And these patterns are getting an awesome show and if you were to lie down and be like 28:45.620 --> 28:47.220 this you'd get a great show from the guy. 28:47.220 --> 28:51.740 You would have all of the dynamism that you would expect from a show. 28:51.740 --> 28:56.340 But all of these are things that places like Alexander Technique which if you now that 28:56.340 --> 28:58.940 I've said that word to you you could look it up. 28:58.940 --> 29:03.260 It's basically the person sits with you and says you've done this wrong, you've done this 29:03.260 --> 29:04.340 wrong, you've done this wrong. 29:04.340 --> 29:09.300 Now try to hold your arm this way, now try to do this and you learn the language that 29:09.300 --> 29:14.980 your body gives and it's very effective for presentations and picking up the opposite 29:14.980 --> 29:17.580 sex. 29:17.580 --> 29:22.820 It's a case of looking at the full message, like I said that second message, that second 29:22.820 --> 29:29.340 presentation that you're given. 29:29.340 --> 29:33.820 I'm a big fan of something I call deeds not words. 29:33.820 --> 29:38.300 If you have somebody who just tells you about stuff but doesn't show you anything, in other 29:38.300 --> 29:42.740 words I'm giving a presentation about giving a presentation in which I'm showing you how 29:42.740 --> 29:44.940 I give a presentation and knock it down. 29:44.940 --> 29:49.620 I'm trying to show you something, I'm trying to give you something that I couldn't give 29:49.620 --> 29:53.380 if I just wrote out a couple paragraphs on some page. 29:53.380 --> 29:58.540 If I said oh yeah you should engage the audience with no impression of what that means for 29:58.540 --> 29:59.660 me. 29:59.660 --> 30:04.340 I'm a certain style and I think that's the other thing to pull away from. 30:04.340 --> 30:05.340 I'm a certain style. 30:05.340 --> 30:07.140 I'm a bombastic person. 30:07.140 --> 30:09.780 I don't need amplification. 30:09.780 --> 30:12.820 I don't need to have a microphone in my face. 30:12.820 --> 30:15.260 I don't like PowerPoint. 30:15.260 --> 30:17.340 I don't like podiums. 30:17.340 --> 30:19.820 I like being here in front of you. 30:19.820 --> 30:23.100 This is a certain kind of person who does that. 30:23.100 --> 30:30.820 Usually they want you to give them all of your money and then die because they're trying 30:30.820 --> 30:34.340 to emotionally pull you in to what's going on. 30:34.340 --> 30:39.060 I happen to be a rather emotional person so I happen to use this. 30:39.060 --> 30:45.140 If you're not an emotional person the whole point of the podium is to protect your body. 30:45.140 --> 30:49.540 Your nads are completely protected from the audience. 30:49.540 --> 30:54.340 They can't get it with their magic audience race. 30:54.340 --> 31:04.780 Now you are a cyborg, a half machine, half person entity able to present a tron to the 31:04.780 --> 31:05.780 audience. 31:05.780 --> 31:06.780 That's fine. 31:06.780 --> 31:10.740 If you're not comfortable being out there or you think it's kind of weird or you think 31:10.740 --> 31:13.620 you're blocking the screen this is fine. 31:13.620 --> 31:21.260 Your voice which is very quiet will be amplified so you'll say my god this BIOS is amazing 31:21.260 --> 31:22.260 to watch. 31:22.260 --> 31:27.660 People will go wow he's really into it. 31:27.660 --> 31:31.260 This is all coded messages and part of the people. 31:31.260 --> 31:34.260 Are you doing that on purpose? 31:34.260 --> 31:35.260 No? 31:35.260 --> 31:36.260 Awesome. 31:36.260 --> 31:37.260 That's the point. 31:37.260 --> 31:42.820 I'm just standing here and it's blocking in and out. 31:42.820 --> 31:44.300 I don't have that problem. 31:44.300 --> 31:47.180 Next person here will have that problem. 31:47.180 --> 31:52.260 When something goes wrong with your presentation you can really tell the character of a presenter 31:52.260 --> 31:57.180 how comfortable they are with the material because if that stops working what happens? 31:57.180 --> 31:59.860 Have they lost their one and only crutch? 31:59.860 --> 32:01.260 What if their projector goes out? 32:01.260 --> 32:02.980 Can they still be engaging? 32:02.980 --> 32:04.540 What happens if everything is stripped down? 32:04.540 --> 32:05.820 What if the lights don't work? 32:05.820 --> 32:06.820 What if we're not here? 32:06.820 --> 32:10.620 At what point do you say okay we can't do this anymore? 32:10.620 --> 32:13.020 There's no such level for me. 32:13.020 --> 32:16.780 Good solid radon gas would do it I think. 32:16.780 --> 32:19.900 If there's no gas in the audience that would probably stop me dead. 32:19.900 --> 32:27.380 But other than that I can just keep going because the material doesn't require it. 32:27.380 --> 32:29.700 Some material requires it and I understand that. 32:29.700 --> 32:35.900 But if you are so dependent on your material that there's no you the audience will notice 32:35.900 --> 32:41.840 that and the question they'll ask again internally subconsciously is why? 32:41.840 --> 32:42.840 Why am I here? 32:42.840 --> 32:45.540 Why is this guy talking? 32:45.540 --> 32:48.700 Why aren't I getting drunk? 32:48.700 --> 32:54.700 Because they're asking themselves fundamental questions you forgot to ask. 32:54.700 --> 33:02.860 So at the end of the day the purpose of a presentation is to inform, entertain, or pass 33:02.860 --> 33:05.740 time. 33:05.740 --> 33:12.740 I happen to think the past time one is so great and I've spent a lot of time passing 33:12.740 --> 33:14.980 time through conventions. 33:14.980 --> 33:19.900 And when you work on your presentations you say to yourself am I doing this to inform? 33:19.900 --> 33:20.900 Am I doing it to entertain? 33:20.900 --> 33:23.500 Am I doing it to pass time? 33:23.500 --> 33:24.500 Why am I doing it? 33:24.500 --> 33:27.740 Am I just doing it because I need to get through? 33:27.740 --> 33:32.220 As you progress through the various levels to get to the end level boss of presentations 33:32.220 --> 33:37.100 which is basically president you end up having different motivations. 33:37.100 --> 33:39.060 You end up having people who will pay you. 33:39.060 --> 33:42.020 I've been flown to Europe to speak. 33:42.020 --> 33:50.900 I've been paid in products or honorariums or I've been brought in to speak and I'm 33:50.900 --> 33:59.300 sitting next to the guy who invented hypertext or a version of it or I'm having dinner with 33:59.300 --> 34:05.500 this guy or I'm having dinner at one point I had dinner in a wonderful old club in England 34:05.500 --> 34:10.740 that had been there for hundreds of years that they took me on a tour. 34:10.740 --> 34:16.900 At that point I didn't care how well the speech went because I had already won on a personal 34:16.900 --> 34:17.900 level. 34:17.900 --> 34:22.060 I mean if you get there and you're like I just met five of my greatest idols just by 34:22.060 --> 34:23.060 being here. 34:23.060 --> 34:27.780 Now on the other hand maybe that inspires you to be a really good speaker because now 34:27.780 --> 34:31.780 you know these people are going to be there and you want to show them that you're worth 34:31.780 --> 34:36.020 their time because you're taking time from them especially if you convince them to sit 34:36.020 --> 34:37.820 in the room with you. 34:37.820 --> 34:44.100 And so I think that we're going to have some pretty entertaining speeches here and I think 34:44.100 --> 34:47.180 we're going to have some informative speeches and I also think we're going to have some 34:47.180 --> 34:53.100 passing time speeches and if you're trying to improve yourself I say the best thing to 34:53.100 --> 34:59.260 do is to stand back a little bit if you find quote unquote bored or disengaged and say 34:59.260 --> 35:00.260 what are they doing wrong? 35:00.260 --> 35:03.460 Why don't I like this speech? 35:03.460 --> 35:04.460 What's wrong here? 35:04.460 --> 35:05.460 Why? 35:05.460 --> 35:06.460 What are they doing? 35:06.460 --> 35:08.100 Are they doing anything wrong? 35:08.100 --> 35:10.340 Sometimes they're not doing anything wrong. 35:10.340 --> 35:16.020 The presenter Seth Hardy has a technique he uses which is he puts up a bottle of alcohol 35:16.020 --> 35:22.540 and explains that he's going to drink from it for the entire con speech until he is drunk. 35:22.540 --> 35:27.420 And what that does on one level is entertain but what it also does is it sets up a plot 35:27.420 --> 35:32.380 line and it sets up a contest and I'm sure he doesn't think of it that way but it's 35:32.380 --> 35:38.980 essentially a contest can he finish the speech before he falls over and he will provide drinks 35:38.980 --> 35:41.740 to the audience members for answering good questions. 35:41.740 --> 35:43.540 Instant engagement. 35:43.540 --> 35:48.460 In other words even the most silly clowning around on a speech has its own purpose and 35:48.460 --> 35:55.860 its own effects and so tomorrow it starts. 35:55.860 --> 36:01.700 At noon we have the first of all presentations the welcome here and then we have a series 36:01.700 --> 36:06.900 of speeches including my own tomorrow and then again on Saturday ending up with the 36:06.900 --> 36:11.700 final presentation of prizes and goodbyes on Sundays and you will have an opportunity 36:11.700 --> 36:18.900 to see this in action and you will have an opportunity to do it yourself in the case 36:18.900 --> 36:24.740 of seven or eight of you assuming you don't run out of the building now. 36:24.740 --> 36:30.020 And I look forward to seeing your approaches and I look forward to seeing some of what 36:30.020 --> 36:35.820 I've said have an effect and I look forward to hearing what you have to say with me in 36:35.820 --> 36:43.580 the position that you're in now and hopefully feeling that I too was given value, worth 36:43.580 --> 36:44.580 and time. 36:44.580 --> 36:45.580 Thank you very much. 36:45.580 --> 36:58.180 Does anyone have any questions about this? 36:58.180 --> 37:02.460 It comes to mind just to give a little bit of the back story. 37:02.460 --> 37:10.660 I wrote this speech 20 minutes ago but 20 minutes before the start of it but that's 37:10.660 --> 37:16.700 very misleading because I don't start thinking about it 20 minutes ago. 37:16.700 --> 37:23.300 I compose pieces in my mind for months beforehand and then I quietly assemble the pieces and 37:23.300 --> 37:25.980 say maybe this audience doesn't need this. 37:25.980 --> 37:27.340 Maybe this audience needs to hear this. 37:27.340 --> 37:30.100 In other words, I sit there and come up with it. 37:30.100 --> 37:36.100 So after I do that, I create a small page. 37:36.100 --> 37:37.700 Usually I didn't have a chance to do a revision. 37:37.700 --> 37:43.860 This would normally be one 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper which has a series of words on them. 37:43.860 --> 37:49.500 So it will simply say introverted, self-awareness, performance and all of them are touchstones 37:49.500 --> 37:50.740 for me. 37:50.740 --> 37:54.180 A lot of people don't like that approach. 37:54.180 --> 37:58.580 You got to really know your subject to be comfortable with a series of nine words to 37:58.580 --> 38:01.980 carry your lame ass through 45 minutes. 38:01.980 --> 38:02.980 And that's fine. 38:02.980 --> 38:08.100 A lot of people write outlines for themselves or, and this bothers me a lot, they use the 38:08.100 --> 38:11.140 PowerPoint as their presentation. 38:11.140 --> 38:13.340 I hate that. 38:13.340 --> 38:14.660 I fucking hate that. 38:14.660 --> 38:20.820 I hate it more than like watching my pets being killed because you're watching a person 38:20.820 --> 38:29.460 who is sitting with you reading his own notes and it's an instant buzzkill, an instant disengagement. 38:29.460 --> 38:31.540 Anyway, that's how I do it. 38:31.540 --> 38:33.460 I don't suggest that for everyone. 38:33.460 --> 38:34.780 That just happens to work for me. 38:34.780 --> 38:36.820 It works for a few other people. 38:36.820 --> 38:45.180 Other ways that people do it besides doing that is to have a series of notes for themselves 38:45.180 --> 38:48.380 on their computer and not have a presentation. 38:48.380 --> 38:52.580 Or they just friggin' wing it. 38:52.580 --> 38:57.220 And some people can really get along with just winging it. 38:57.220 --> 38:58.220 Not many. 38:58.220 --> 39:01.500 I mean, you know, at that point they're a clown. 39:01.500 --> 39:02.500 Anyway, any questions? 39:02.500 --> 39:03.500 Yes? 39:03.500 --> 39:23.100 Well, when you show people code, they're not going to be like, oh, I'm going to show you 39:23.100 --> 39:24.100 this program. 39:24.100 --> 39:34.180 Have you seen that and what do you think of that and what are your feelings about that? 39:34.180 --> 39:39.100 Well, when you show people code, all you're doing is prove to them that you wrote code. 39:39.100 --> 39:43.700 That's the entire point of information that's going to come from that. 39:43.700 --> 39:49.940 In other words, I gave a presentation where I showed code on my twittering account, Saffington 39:49.940 --> 39:53.660 the Cat, where I showed the script that generates Saffington. 39:53.660 --> 40:00.740 And its purpose was just to go, I made a script and the script does this. 40:00.740 --> 40:04.740 But every time you put something up on the screen, it's a message to the audience to 40:04.740 --> 40:06.800 say, and you should read this. 40:06.800 --> 40:07.800 But they can't read code. 40:07.800 --> 40:11.820 Like, not if it's going to be, you know, 40 lines. 40:11.820 --> 40:17.660 But if what you're really saying is, is like, we did this and with one small effect, we 40:17.660 --> 40:19.620 got this great effect. 40:19.620 --> 40:21.660 And you show like, you know, two lines. 40:21.660 --> 40:24.660 And you're like, we were able to like just do this. 40:24.660 --> 40:28.620 Then you've passed along to them, this is a small piece of information, it uses this 40:28.620 --> 40:30.500 and it did this thing afterwards. 40:30.500 --> 40:33.700 In other words, it's being used as a talisman. 40:33.700 --> 40:42.820 A lot of people, we had some presentation here, one of you did it, I think, where somebody 40:42.820 --> 40:43.820 put up something. 40:43.820 --> 40:46.740 They put up a slide here that I counted, right? 40:46.740 --> 40:51.740 It had 55 lines, and it was small as shit. 40:51.740 --> 40:55.220 I mean, each thing was here, which was awesome on your laptop. 40:55.220 --> 41:00.100 But as soon as you broadcast it, it just looks like big fuzzy crap. 41:00.100 --> 41:04.700 And it's information, I mean, it's actual information of like, oh, here's this, this, 41:04.700 --> 41:06.260 this, this, this. 41:06.260 --> 41:09.580 And it looks good here, but it looks terrible on the screen because the audience just gets 41:09.580 --> 41:13.180 hit with this cinder block. 41:13.180 --> 41:20.300 And they just go, all right, you know, it's like showing somebody, you know, all the architecture 41:20.300 --> 41:22.900 plans going, get it. 41:22.900 --> 41:26.740 And they're like, yeah, you made architecture plans. 41:26.740 --> 41:30.940 So code, if there's something that's unique about your code that you want to get across 41:30.940 --> 41:35.380 to people, I would focus on the formulas or the very specific pieces. 41:35.380 --> 41:42.180 But just to go, I wrote a big thing of code, unless there is an exception to this, to go, 41:42.180 --> 41:43.740 I made all this code. 41:43.740 --> 41:48.740 And then you immediately show the result of the code. 41:48.740 --> 41:49.740 Then you could see that, right? 41:49.740 --> 41:51.620 It's like, oh, look at all this code. 41:51.620 --> 41:52.900 And then we finished our project. 41:52.900 --> 41:54.660 And this is what the project looks like. 41:54.660 --> 41:56.500 So a person goes, oh, look at that. 41:56.500 --> 42:02.140 It's essentially like showing somebody a photograph of all these people assembling wood. 42:02.140 --> 42:03.900 And then the next shot is a house. 42:03.900 --> 42:06.500 You go like, oh, of course, you don't have to sit there and go like, God, what kind of 42:06.500 --> 42:07.500 load bearing are they using? 42:07.500 --> 42:08.860 What are they doing all this stuff over here? 42:08.860 --> 42:11.340 Has anybody thought about the OSHA requirements? 42:11.340 --> 42:15.420 All they go, oh, people made a house. 42:15.420 --> 42:17.100 And it's much more effective. 42:17.100 --> 42:23.860 If you want people to read the code, you make it on a website and make a big, fat link while 42:23.860 --> 42:24.860 you're answering questions. 42:24.860 --> 42:28.940 And when people go there, you go, I did this, I did this, and here's all the code. 42:28.940 --> 42:34.140 Or if you don't want people to know about the code, you're essentially showing it to 42:34.140 --> 42:38.340 them just for a moment to go like, yes, and we worked really hard on it, and we did this. 42:38.340 --> 42:40.460 And that way, they get like, oh, I get it. 42:40.460 --> 42:42.260 There was a lot of stuff. 42:42.260 --> 42:43.260 That's my personal opinion. 42:43.260 --> 42:49.820 I think that a lot of presentations think that they both underestimate and overestimate 42:49.820 --> 42:50.820 their audience. 42:50.820 --> 42:53.420 They underestimate that the audience will understand basic concepts. 42:53.420 --> 42:55.020 Like, I'm on a computer. 42:55.020 --> 42:58.260 A computer is a device that provides information. 42:58.260 --> 43:03.260 And then a little bit later, they'll be like, here is a 80 by 25 block of text that I'm 43:03.260 --> 43:05.460 going to show you for 20 seconds, and you will memorize it. 43:05.460 --> 43:09.140 So you'll get my point three slides down. 43:09.140 --> 43:10.140 So it can go either way. 43:10.140 --> 43:11.140 So that's my take. 43:11.140 --> 43:12.820 Did we just clap for you? 43:12.820 --> 43:14.820 I'm answering questions, bitch. 43:14.820 --> 43:17.660 See, he is what we call a heckler. 43:17.660 --> 43:19.660 Now, various people have different ways of doing it. 43:19.660 --> 43:20.660 A heckler. 43:20.660 --> 43:21.660 Heckling is an integral part of not a heckler. 43:21.660 --> 43:24.660 He is a staff member, right? 43:24.660 --> 43:26.660 And that depends on the definition of staff. 43:26.660 --> 43:27.660 If you're just having a seat. 43:27.660 --> 43:30.660 Give me a moment, and I'll show you a staff member. 43:30.660 --> 43:31.660 All right, there we go. 43:31.660 --> 43:32.660 Anyway, so. 43:32.660 --> 43:33.660 This is how they do it with hecklers. 43:33.660 --> 43:39.660 I, yeah, I had anonymous heckle me at Raffle Thing, and my solution was to pull one of 43:39.660 --> 43:41.740 them up on stage and kiss him. 43:41.740 --> 43:44.740 And that was a much more effective way to knock them down. 43:44.740 --> 43:46.740 It sure didn't work with me. 43:46.740 --> 43:47.740 No, it never works with you. 43:47.740 --> 43:48.740 Did somebody else have a question? 43:48.740 --> 43:49.740 Yes. 43:49.740 --> 43:50.740 How do you know if you're out too informed? 43:50.740 --> 43:57.740 How do you know you have too much material, or how do you know you have too little? 43:57.740 --> 43:58.740 How do you know you have too much or too little? 43:58.740 --> 43:59.740 Besides running over or running short, which really doesn't help. 43:59.740 --> 44:00.740 Well, it sort of does. 44:00.740 --> 44:01.740 Okay, so. 44:01.740 --> 44:02.740 It's a guideline. 44:02.740 --> 44:04.740 In other words, people who walk into a speech. 44:04.740 --> 44:05.740 We've had people here who have been on stage for a long time, and they've had people here 44:05.740 --> 44:06.740 who have been on stage for a long time, and they've had people here who have been on stage 44:06.740 --> 44:10.240 for a long time, and they've had people here who have been on stage for a long time, and 44:10.240 --> 44:15.060 they've had people in the audience who have had the story and the example. 44:15.060 --> 44:34.580 I think one of the most interesting things there is hard work, because it can 44:34.580 --> 44:42.580 All right? And they'll say something which pulls the curtain up immediately that they're fully aware of this. 44:42.580 --> 44:46.580 They'll say, yeah, that's kind of all I had to say about this thing, so if anyone wants to give me... 44:46.580 --> 44:47.580 And their voices are always low. 44:47.580 --> 44:51.580 When I have to do this, so if anyone wants to ask any questions, I can type it out. 44:51.580 --> 44:53.580 Okay, no one does. 44:53.580 --> 44:57.580 And they leave. That to me is just, you know, a huge insult. 44:57.580 --> 45:05.580 I think it's a case of, like, you have some places that have a cultural expectation. 45:05.580 --> 45:07.580 You know, things that were wild and willy here. 45:07.580 --> 45:08.580 Very enjoyable, right? 45:08.580 --> 45:11.580 You'll get somebody who's a drunk asshole in the back who's just screaming at you. 45:11.580 --> 45:13.580 And it's kind of funny. And you've got to deal with it. 45:13.580 --> 45:17.580 And you've got other places where the audience is just not paying attention to you. 45:17.580 --> 45:20.580 They're not looking at you. They're twittering. They're doing laptop stuff. 45:20.580 --> 45:23.580 And that's fine. You're all kind of sharing and experiencing. 45:23.580 --> 45:25.580 They don't care how much you talk. 45:25.580 --> 45:35.580 But if you find that your goal is to transfer some body of knowledge to people, 45:35.580 --> 45:40.580 I honestly think that most speeches work better as pointers to bodies of knowledge. 45:40.580 --> 45:43.580 If I go off on a 15-minute rant on the Alexander Technique, 45:43.580 --> 45:48.580 I feel like I could go off on this whole thing and, you know, 45:48.580 --> 45:50.580 three or four people are like, oh, it's kind of interesting. 45:50.580 --> 45:53.580 And then the rest of the people are like, wow, this is not what I signed up for. 45:53.580 --> 45:57.580 And so I listen to the audience, too. 45:57.580 --> 46:01.580 This is also a weird thing that comes from my improv days 46:01.580 --> 46:07.580 where I can feel an audience so that I can tell when they're starting to kind of lose it. 46:07.580 --> 46:11.580 And sometimes I might be intentionally going further. 46:11.580 --> 46:14.580 So I'm like, oh, what's going to happen now if I really push this one? 46:14.580 --> 46:16.580 What are they going to do? Are they going to start to really slump? 46:16.580 --> 46:18.580 Are they going to do this? You watch for people slumping. 46:18.580 --> 46:22.580 But again, this comes after dozens of speeches. 46:22.580 --> 46:25.580 You start to notice when people – like if you worked in radio, 46:25.580 --> 46:30.580 after a while you don't have to look at the clock to do a 15-second presentation. 46:30.580 --> 46:32.580 You start to feel uncomfortable. 46:32.580 --> 46:36.580 You're like, oh, I think I'm buttoned up on 50 seconds. Oh, there we go. OK. 46:36.580 --> 46:40.580 And you feel it. And similarly, you can say, oh, God, the audience is starting to feel like they're – 46:40.580 --> 46:45.580 we're wrapping up here. Let's go. Fuck. When can I go? Right? 46:45.580 --> 46:48.580 We're here. We're here. We're there about now. 46:48.580 --> 46:50.580 I mean, it's about six or seven of you that need to go. 46:50.580 --> 46:53.580 But you're wanting to see what the fuckhead is going to do at the top of the screen. 46:53.580 --> 46:58.580 And that's fine. I can – you know, I'm not bothered by people leaving. 46:58.580 --> 47:02.580 People do that all the time. And that's the thing. You can't let that kind of stuff – 47:02.580 --> 47:05.580 you can't embarrass people for leaving. They've got to go to the bathroom. 47:05.580 --> 47:08.580 They told their girlfriend they're going to go to 930. But they like you so much, 47:08.580 --> 47:11.580 they want to at least hear 20 minutes of you. 47:11.580 --> 47:14.580 And you're criticizing them for leaving early. 47:14.580 --> 47:18.580 You never know what people's motivations are. You can't treat them like that. 47:18.580 --> 47:23.580 They're not your toys. They're fun to play with, but they're not your toys. 47:23.580 --> 47:30.580 In terms of information, when you have people who are trying to get across a lot, 47:30.580 --> 47:36.580 I had Jerry Ellsworth last year speak about the creation of field-programmable gate arrays, 47:36.580 --> 47:40.580 which is an unbelievably dense subject. She spent years learning it. 47:40.580 --> 47:43.580 She's a professional. And she said, so should I give people basics? 47:43.580 --> 47:50.580 I said no. Fuck them. Do a talk on stuff you've discovered. 47:50.580 --> 47:55.580 Because it's too direct a subject. It's too much. 47:55.580 --> 47:59.580 In other words, field-programmable gate arrays assumes all this stuff. 47:59.580 --> 48:07.580 And for her to try to fit that in in four minutes beforehand will not benefit the people who know what gate arrays are. 48:07.580 --> 48:11.580 And it won't benefit the people who don't know. They'll be like, oh, cool. 48:11.580 --> 48:16.580 Once there was a rock and now we're going to learn about Zor. It's just too much. 48:16.580 --> 48:20.580 And so I said, you know what? Do it so that you really push the people, 48:20.580 --> 48:25.580 the cool stuff you learned way up where you are and do it. That's for her, right? 48:25.580 --> 48:31.580 Now, the fat man gave a rambling poetic music-filled speech last year. 48:31.580 --> 48:34.580 This is a man who has 25 years in the industry. 48:34.580 --> 48:40.580 He's giving a keynote tomorrow to Games Development Convention and told them, 48:40.580 --> 48:45.580 I had so much fun at Natacon that I want to just give the keynote and leave. 48:45.580 --> 48:57.580 And so he's flying up tomorrow on my dime to get to this place so that he can give a speech with Jerry on Saturday. 48:57.580 --> 49:03.580 His speech was a rambling music-filled piece. It was kind of went in all these different directions. 49:03.580 --> 49:07.580 But this was a man who had such a pedigree. He did the music for Seventh Guest. 49:07.580 --> 49:12.580 He's the first time there's somebody who had Red Book Audio on a video game. 49:12.580 --> 49:17.580 This is a guy who's got the history. So you're there to hear him. 49:17.580 --> 49:20.580 Doesn't matter what he says. Let's listen to him go. 49:20.580 --> 49:23.580 And he had all sorts of cool kind of insights and things, but it was all jumbled up. 49:23.580 --> 49:30.580 It was all very unusual. But it was a joy. It was a performance more than an information piece. 49:30.580 --> 49:33.580 I'm trying to think of my other presenters and the other people who I dealt with. 49:33.580 --> 49:38.580 I've had a few presenters who I've paid for. I've had them come here and they suck. 49:38.580 --> 49:42.580 Full of knowledge. Terrible presentation. 49:42.580 --> 49:48.580 But you take that risk. And they may or may not know that. I don't know if they do know that. 49:48.580 --> 49:53.580 You know who I'm talking to. Who just, you know, because it's not their strong suit. 49:53.580 --> 49:59.580 But their information was good. Whatever came out of their mealy-mouthed, poor presentation was accurate. 49:59.580 --> 50:05.580 But it was not going to win over their audience because it was a very dull piece. 50:05.580 --> 50:11.580 So I don't know. I think maybe, you know, audience is good for five, five to ten pieces of information. 50:11.580 --> 50:20.580 If they're a good human audience. If there are crazy ass academic Google code bots, they're probably good for 15 to 20. 50:20.580 --> 50:25.580 Some of them are going to sit there and write notes on everything. So yeah, they can do infinite stuff. 50:25.580 --> 50:30.580 But now you are the world's worst fax machine. 50:30.580 --> 50:35.580 That's what you are. You're putting out information and they're like... 50:35.580 --> 50:40.580 You know, you're getting like 300 BPI there. I don't know, something around that. 50:40.580 --> 50:45.580 Real sucking. No high speed. So, you know, back and forth. There's a whole bunch. 50:45.580 --> 50:48.580 The reason I didn't just say five to seven is because it's all different. 50:48.580 --> 50:51.580 It could be one really good piece of information, right? 50:51.580 --> 50:57.580 Like the classic presentation is the script show where the one piece of information is I'm nude. 50:57.580 --> 51:04.580 That's a one bit presentation, but awesome. Awesome. Look, I'll pay you now. 51:04.580 --> 51:14.580 And other ones are like I am about to give you something. A good example is Andrew Wiles' speech where he was able to prove Fermat's theorem. 51:14.580 --> 51:25.580 And it was a very long speech and he didn't complete it, which was, you know, Fermat's theorem had stood unproven for decades and decades. 51:25.580 --> 51:31.580 I think a couple hundred years where he had just written something in a margin and written this little basic math thing. 51:31.580 --> 51:35.580 And nobody had been able to prove it. 51:35.580 --> 51:47.580 And a man named Andrew Wiles spent seven years doing nothing else but working mathematically out to figure out how to prove the theorem. And he ultimately did it. 51:47.580 --> 51:50.580 There was a period when it looked like it wasn't quite accurate, but then he did it again. 51:50.580 --> 51:54.580 You know, it looks like it might have a problem. No, it doesn't have a problem. 51:54.580 --> 51:58.580 But for his presentation, he didn't tell people what he was going to do. 51:58.580 --> 52:02.580 And everyone showed up and all the word was like, wow, Wiles is up to something. 52:02.580 --> 52:05.580 Wiles has big news. Wiles is going to talk about it. 52:05.580 --> 52:11.580 And the way he presented it was he started out with the basics and just moved out over, I think it was an hour and a half. 52:11.580 --> 52:16.580 Moving up, moving up. And you're like, wait a second, I think he's going in the realm of Fermats and he's doing this. 52:16.580 --> 52:22.580 And he hits up to the point where he's basically laid out both these pieces and they're just got it. 52:22.580 --> 52:27.580 All you got to do is do one more equation and they click right in. And he got up to that point. 52:27.580 --> 52:30.580 Guess what? I think it'll stop there for now. 52:30.580 --> 52:34.580 That was a showman. He really took his seven years. 52:34.580 --> 52:38.580 And it was a big friggin' deal. Songs were written about him. 52:38.580 --> 52:44.580 He got in everything and that was how he presented his info. He didn't feel he had to complete it. 52:44.580 --> 52:48.580 He just, you know, total, total pimp. 52:48.580 --> 52:53.580 Any other questions? 52:53.580 --> 52:58.580 Okay. Thank you very much for your time. I'm going to be around for the entire convention. 52:58.580 --> 53:05.580 If you have any questions or anything like that. 53:05.580 --> 53:10.580 And I'm running BlockParty so that's going to take a lot of my time. I hope some of you enter it. 53:10.580 --> 53:13.580 Feel free to look at demoparty.us. 53:13.580 --> 53:21.580 We also have a coders lounge. We actually have, due to something really weird, some free laptops to use. 53:21.580 --> 53:27.580 We were given a pile of laptops so if you want to hack something out there and you don't have access, we can get it for you. 53:27.580 --> 53:32.580 And the winner of the demo competition gets a $1,000 machine. 53:32.580 --> 53:37.580 So it's worth it to you to take a shot at it. People have won more with less. 53:37.580 --> 53:58.580 Thanks again for your time.